I think I can run again

I woke up at 530am. I huddled up all my laundry, went downstairs and out the courtyard and into the laudry room and started the washing machines. Came back into the house and made some coffee. While coffee was brewing, I started stretching. I moved on to some strength exercises and worked up a sweat. Coffee was done and started to cool off. Had several sips of the coffee and went to move my laundry into the dryers. I came back in, put on my running cap and off i went on a 30 minute run.

Because all my muscles were already loosened up and in fact fired up to move, I started with a run straight out. 4 minutes. then 1.5 minute walk. I repeated this interval 3 times. Felt pretty good. Left hip flexor was feeling fine, no real kinks being felt anywhere, my upperbody was upright and stayed that way without much struggle, I was pretty happy. After the intervals, I just ran very easy for about 8 minutes...and the last 2 minutes I spent doing 30 second sprints 4 times, with a minute of rest in between. The sprints were challenging (as they are supposed to be...30 secs never felt so long) but they felt great. I came back in to my house and stretched my calves, hip flexors, hamstrings and inner thighs. Of course i didn't forget to take out my laundry out of the dryer and fold them (actually, only some of them due to time limitations). OMG did that whole process feel absolutely amazing. Well, except for the laundry.

The past 4-5 weeks have been frustrating but I think I made the right choice by not even going near running but focusing on conditioning and strengthening my pillars - hips and shoulders to be specific. Those have been chronically weak areas for me, with a long history of problems. I just focused on strengthening those areas while still biking (no hills) and swimming. I stretched religiously and diligently went through the strengthening exercises, and let's not forget the grueling foam rolling sessions. I'm so grateful and relieved that my run today felt pretty good.

I will probably give my leg a rest tomorrow and just swim. Friday I will do strength training and do regenerative exercises (meaning foam rolling) while giving myself a rest day before the Saturday ride. I'm going to see if I can do about a 60 mile ride on Saturday, but if i start hurting I will back off. If all goes well, i'm back to the regular training schedule of swim-bike-run all week starting Monday! I'll still mix in some strength work especially around running days.

Yesterday I called it - i called that the pain should end. I feel the power of my words making my weaknesses surrender.

I may even come out stronger thru this process. I'm very hopeful about the next couple of months.

Setbacks may not even be a bad thing - depending on what you do with it, it can actually provide you with the opporutnity to raise the bar for the next stage.